Chasing Rainbows

As we started our dinner last night, she prudently admitted stuff. Something which I frankly last expected to hear, when the moon still orbited the earth and the latter still orbited the sun, at the very least. However, there was this peculiar urge, a desire I might as well call, to simply listen to what she was about to blurt out, as it had something to do with that very person whose existence, for so many indescribable reasons, once had been the essence of this tiny little world of mine. The one that got away, as my best friend always said.

“He did care about you, if that might gratify you.” She startled me with her blunt, most unexpected yet delighting confession. I was all ears, though I tried to seem not. 

Assuming she was not paying attention, I grabbed my cup at the drop of a hat, and sipped my coffee nervously. My heart was beating so penetratingly that I swear someone could have heard. I choked. Shortly, I found myself trying too hard to mask my clumsiness under a loud cough. I failed though. This very best friend of mine noticed every single thing. 

“You don’t need to fake it. I know you like the back of my hand, honey.” She smiled, broadly. And something about it made me want to literally bite my tongue. 

“Yeah.” I whispered between my clenched teeth, feeling completely idiotic. 

“So, isn’t the news good? Now you actually no longer have this so called unfinished business with the you-know-who. It must be a relief. It deserves a medal. After all those months.”

“What deserves a medal?”

“Well, the revelation, of course.” She sluggishly answered the question.

“I’m sorry, but why do I have this feeling that somebody is trying to say that that somebody deserves a medal? Not particularly the revelation.”

“It is the revelation that deserves a medal. Not that somebody. That somebody was just delivering a message and conveying the meaning, that if you let her.” We are inevitably at each other’s throats. Silence followed. My mind was disoriented. Then she continued,

“Whoa! Whatever, my dear. Let’s not talk about what or who deserves a medal. We both know it’s not the thing I want to point out in the first place. Don’t give me the impression that you are trying to avoid the subject. You aren’t, are you?

“I am not.” I retorted as I looked away, trying to avoid her scrutinizing eyes.

“You just sound like my little sister when she gets mad.” She annoyingly laughed. 

The situation was always like this. Unnerving. I lost control of every single thing when she brought up the subject. And she just knew exactly where to stab me. She carried on when the laughter faded to some sort of periodic giggles.

 “Fine, then. Let’s go back to the revelation. And please, no more trying-to-look-for-any-excuse mode on. So tell me, beautiful princess, are you gratified?”

“Gratified with what?” I responded, irritated, and challenged her intimidating eyes.

“You’re playing dumb, huh? I’m asking you if you are feeling gratified with knowing that you-know-who did actually care about you back then?”

“You, mad lady, would you please correct me if I’m wrong? Was it you the one who once told me to quit chasing rainbows? To give up on it? Then why are you bringing up the subject again? After all what I’ve been through for gad’s sake! You’re so unreal.” My voice trembled and shrieked to three different octaves.

“Well, I did tell you that. But it’s an obviously different issue we’ve got here. Asking you to quit chasing rainbows is completely absolutely different from asking you to admit your feeling. Does that make sense to you? Or you’re still trying to play this dumb girl stuff with me?”

“Okay. Fine. You wanna know how I feel? You really wanna know? I don’t believe you. The possibility of him caring about me is almost the same as the possibility of my high heels walking to the prom by themselves. That’s how I feel.”

She adjusted her seat as I carried on, “And why would that have mattered? Now that I have my own life, he’s got his. He seems happy and I without doubt am. Talking over something that has passed won’t do me any good. So just drop it.”

After for what felt like a minute, she mouthed a word which looked so much like a lie from across the table, making her lips ten times bigger than necessary. She added an exaggerated wink soon after that, which made her look completely ridiculous. I rose quickly from my chair.

“Where are you going?”

“Need the bathroom. What? You wanna know what I’m doing there as well?” I left as I heard her giggling relentlessly. 

***

I spent ten minutes in the toilet. If only I had not been in a public one, I would have locked myself inside for another ten. I was just too embarrassed to meet her. I was overreacting. I was in such a denial. Caught red-handed. And this very good friend of mine had always been too clever to be deceived that sometimes I refused to talk things over with her, especially when it came to that very person whom I had been determined to say a farewell to.

When I came back to our table, the room was almost empty. The other customers who previously gathered around the table next to ours had vanished. My friend was finishing her dessert. She swirled the spoon over and over again, without any intention to actually eat the ice cream inside her giant white cup.

“Are you going to finish that? I can call a monkey to do you the job if you want to.” I pointed the ice cream with my chin. 

“No. Yes. No. I don’t know. What do you reckon?” She threw out a question instead of answering mine. This was what I hate mostly about her, always managed to throw out those random questions just to see what my mood is like. And what I hated even more was that she always succeeded with the effort. 

            “It’s melting. You’d better finish it soon, unless you don’t feel like eating what you have ordered in the first place.”

            “That’s the point, hon. You comprehend my mood so very perfectly. Standing ovation.” She put her hands in the air and casually gestured a couple of claps.

            “You’re out of your mind. I can’t believe I’m hanging out with someone who is currently not competent to grasp a very simple sentence. You do speak English, don’t you?”

            “HA HA HA. I grasp the sentence very well, even beyond what you have expected. Thus, I was trying to make you grasp it the way I do. Because it seems to me that you still don’t get the point in us having the conversation tonight” She ignored the question.

“Try me.”

“Listen, you naïve woman, mood changes. And choices will always get in the way. I did order the ice cream earlier. Because I love ice cream and felt like having it as a dessert tonight. But then we had that argument, just because I wanted to let you know the ugly truth about your past relationship. Then I end up finding the ice cream no longer tantalizing. Hence, I have chosen not to finish it. Otherwise, I’m gonna make my stomach receive something that I least desire. And I just can’t.  But no, that’s not the point. The point is that I have made a decision. That melted ice cream will never ever have the ability to ruin it.”

“I know. I got it. You’re trying to tell me that knowing you-know-who did actually care about me shouldn’t have bothered me. But in fact, it did. I have never been a competent liar. So here it goes. The fact that he genuinely had the feeling for me is pleasing and heart-breaking at the same time. If that feeling did exist, I would now be with him having dinner, instead of with you. If he had actually felt what I felt back then, he wouldn’t have let me go. So, I refuse to believe it. Yet, the other part of me is feeling glad. Glad to finally find the answer to the question that had filled my head since so long ago. But that still doesn’t change the fact that we two just don’t work. And the pain is incorrigible. And I’m a bit upset about it. I really am.”

“We all have choices, dear. I made one. You did the same. And you know what? You have made the best out of all you can possibly make. You chose certainty and happiness over spending months or years or however long it would have been chasing rainbows. After all, rainbows probably are not meant to be chased, they are meant to be simply adored. That way, you’ll find things easier.”

The evening sky darkened, as dark as my vision about the past. But I knew there would always be the moon with its dim light. Then so long, rainbows. It took the sun light and the rain to get you in sight. While I was here, enjoying the moon light.